


To Be Saved

by mawmawile



Category: Yandere Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Loneliness, Swearing, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29866752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mawmawile/pseuds/mawmawile
Summary: There was nothing for Ayano, nothing to Ayano. The only thing she had was an overwhelming emptiness where her soul should be, a listless despair that pervaded her very being. Just falling in love should be enough, but... but... It should be enough, shouldn't it?
Kudos: 13





	To Be Saved

Ayano’s father was all drooping lines and soft eyes and shaking hands, eyes always focused on the exit, gathering courage that always fizzled away in an instant. Ayano was nothing like him, but she often wondered if she inherited that profound, unending emptiness from him, always looking ahead for better days and finding nothing, only seeing a dark black void dwindle into the distance as far as the eye could see.

“Do you love Mom?” she had asked one day when she was still too young for school.

Love was a foreign concept to her. She had seen melodramas on television, the smiles, the tears, the rage brought on by love and puzzled over it nonstop. Ayano would mime the actors’ faces and feel strange, like she was wearing a mask that suffocated her.

Her parents acted nothing like the lovey-dovey couples on TV, leaving her confused with the split between the devotion of fiction and the tension of reality.

Her father looked at her with that face she never understood, the one he always had whenever Ayano said something strange—it was an expression he afforded only when her mother was absent.

“Of course I love your mother.” He touched her dark hair tenderly, although the affection was lost on her. “You’re the proof of our love.”

Ayano looked down at her small hands, and back up at her father, whose eyes were hazy, as if he were looking past her and into the distance watching a possibility and a reality that didn’t exist and would never exist.

After her mother came home and they had dinner, Ayano tugged at her skirts and pulled her into her room. Ayano’s room was plain and nearly empty, a far cry from the childrens’ bedrooms on TV, with pink walls and posters and toys.

“Do you love Dad?”

Ryoba smiled and knelt down to meet her gaze. “More than anything in the world.” Her eyes were as distant as Ayano’s father, but she supposed the two were thinking about different things.

“More than me?”

“Of course more than you,” her mother said and Ayano thought nothing of it.

It was simply a confirmation of what she already knew.

“Does he love you too?”

“No,” her mother said, but her face didn’t change. Perhaps she really didn’t care. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s unreasonable to ask him to do the impossible.”

Ryoba stretched her hand out and grasped both of Ayano’s, her mother’s hand completely enveloping hers. “Us Aishis are incapable of being loved, and largely incapable of loving others. There is only one person you can ever love, and he will be the one to save you. You will finally be able to _feel alive_.”

“Dad makes you feel alive?”

“Yes. And someday you will too.” She let go of Ayano’s hand and pat her head, like her father had done earlier. There was no affection in the gesture. “So bear with it until then.”

* * *

Ayano moved through life like a ghost, nearly presenceless and silent, intentionless and dreary. She ate and slept, filtered through boredom with more boredom, and spoke only to friends when they happened upon her by chance. Life was meaningless, but she kept her mother’s words in the back of her mind. _Bear with it until then_.

She wondered what it was like to be alive. The emptiness within her chest sometimes weighed so heavy she could hardly breathe. When she woke up, day after day she wondered if it would be better to just sleep. There was nothing for her, no matter if she awoke or slept.

Ayano blended into the background, feeling nothing and almost being nothing. She was a _nothing_ person, unloved and unloving and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

 _Bear with it until then_.

Those were the words she lived by, the words that pervaded her mind when she was bored, the words she repeated in bed until she drifted off into dreamless sleep, as if saying them over and over again would make it more true, make it happen faster…

She wondered what her savior would be like. Would he be like her father who had long since given up hope? Or her mother, who had nothing inside of her from the start? Perhaps, in another world, if Ayano hadn’t been born an Aishi, would her savior love her?

Maybe if she hadn’t been born an Aishi, maybe if she hadn’t been born with the listless poison that dragged her underneath the mud, struggling and suffocating and vanishing… She had nothing left to do, but to wait, wait to be saved. To be happy. Maybe if she wasn’t here at all, maybe… Maybe there would be something for her.

But she didn’t know, and she waited.

* * *

Her savior’s name was Taro.

Ayano met him, by chance, in school. She turned a corner and fell down when she accidentally ran into him. He held out his hand and she took it and she felt electric. Foreign.

 _Warm_ … she thought to herself. _His hand is warm…_ And it was different from her parents’ natural body heat, something that existed just because they were human. No, it was a pure and dynamic heat, that labored her breath and filled her with…

“Life,” she muttered to herself, when he was already gone. “I suppose this is life.”

Happiness was a word she only knew the definition of, but right then Ayano knew she was happy. Elated, even. Happiness filled her body, every part of her being, and the feeling was so bright and rigorous that she burst into tears right then and there.

As she attracted stares and whispers, and as tears and snot streamed down her face she understood finally that this was love. And that she would do anything, _anything_ to preserve it.

Taro Yamada was constantly tailed by a girl named Osana, who had a sharp face and a sharp personality. The two were childhood friends and cared for each other deeply. Osana pined for him but was too blunt and awkward to be anything more than endearing, but still she tried her hardest like a lovesick schoolgirl.

Well, she was one, after all.

Ayano wanted so badly to run up to her and start screaming, protesting that _it’s not fair_ , _I need him more_. Because to Osana, who loved and was loved, boys like Taro were interchangeable. Osana knew nothing of the pain Ayano went through, of the suffocating weight of emptiness. She could have anyone in the world and be just as happy, but to Ayano there was only one person that could make her alive. Before meeting Taro, she was nothing but a walking ghost, and if he vanished from her life she would be much the same, but…

It was like the myth of Tantalus, constantly reaching upward, constantly knowing goodness and happiness, constantly just out of his reach, constantly suffering and looking forward and seeing that there’s something past that black void of emptiness and never being able to have it.

Perhaps it was better to be dead than to live in a world without Taro.

Ayano walked in Taro’s shadow because she needed him, and Osana clung to him because she wanted him, even if it was superficial. It was a relationship of usefulness. Yet, despite their uselessness to each other, Osana ended up befriending her.

Osana… She talked a lot. She talked about her family—lambasting her parents for their constant bickering—she talked about school—complaining she wasn’t as smart as the rest of her class—she talked about her favorite bands—gossiping about her favorite songs and ships and whatever. Though she talked a lot, she was incredibly observant. She learned rather early on that Ayano wasn’t talkative, so stopped asking questions but gave plenty of room for her to chime in, if she wanted to. She never did want to. Rather, Osana and her friend Raibaru talked about whatever inane thing they wanted. Still, one of them would occasionally use Ayano’s name just to acknowledge her.

She couldn’t say she enjoyed their conversations, but… Osana’s voice was clear and silvery, Raibaru’s soft and sweet. At the very least, their contrasting sounds weren’t grating and drew the ear to attention.

Osana, oftentimes, spoke about Taro. Just the sound of his name made Ayano clam up and become nervous, snapping to attention and watching Osana intently, just to see what she was thinking.

Rage, too, was a new emotion. It made her heart race and her hands quiver and tears spring to her eyes with the same intensity as when she first came alive. It swept over her so suddenly and gripped her with a familiar yet unfamiliar suffocating tightness. And, in an instant, it would dissolve into nothingness when the other girls laughed and moved onto a different topic.

Ayano felt like she was immutably stuck. Against her will, time moved hazily and slowly but moved nonetheless. She was no closer to Taro and Osana was no further. She spent winter break alone and nervous, and when spring started the only thing that changed was her school uniform.

Osana was still there, seemingly satisfied with the world just as it was, continuing to stay with her as spring shed its coldness and traded it for warmth.

In the warm spring days, Osana and Raibaru liked to hang out by the pool after classes, so Ayano naturally followed.

The water was ice cold and smelt too strongly of bleach, but still the two enjoyed taking off their shoes and socks and dipping their feet in anyways. Ayano didn’t join in, but sat at the edge of the pool with her legs crossed, undoing her ponytail and letting the light breeze tousle it gently. It was… refreshing, at least.

“Ah, jeez, Fukahori-sensei has some kinda vendetta against me personally~” Osana complained, splashing water around with her feet.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Raibaru was quick to assure, putting a gentle hand on Osana’s forearm. “She probably just wants to see you succeed.”

Osana huffed. “I have the lowest grades in the class, _again_! This can’t be a coincidence!”

“Well—” Raibaru smiled, as if she was trying to think of a way to call Osana a bad student without calling her a bad student. “I can always help you study. Or Yan-chan can.”

Ayano looked up at her, like she always did whenever her name was mentioned.

“Oh, that’s right! Yan-chan got the highest score, didn’t she?” Osana laughed, a sound just as mellifluous as it always was. “You should let me cheat off you some time.”

“Osana!” Raibaru playfully smacked her in the arm.

“Rude girl! You know I was just joking. You pack a mean punch!” Osana flicked her back. “But yeah, Yan-chan. If you wanted to study with me and Rai it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Just drop by if you wanted to,” Raibaru added, so Ayano wouldn’t have to answer.

Ayano didn’t answer. But she, more and more, considered their voices pleasing to the ear, even if it was the only part of them she liked. Besides, she always liked math, which Osana often complained about. Numbers were unlike people—no matter how complex the problem looked, it could always be simply and consistently solved. But she could never figure out relationships, could never figure out why Osana let her stay despite her reticence.

She didn’t want to talk to them, but… perhaps she should go with them.

Maybe not.

Osana leaned back and sighed. “It’s getting warmer. I feel like I totally wasted this year.”

“Why do you say that?” said Raibaru.

“I told you this before, but…” Osana frowned. “I really wanted this to be the year I confess to Taro-senpai.”

Ayano drew in a sharp breath, and her heart dropped in anticipation. She busied herself by watching her flickering reflection in the water, but the girls’ voices suddenly turned grating and shrill.

“Spring just started, so you still have plenty of time,” said Raibaru. Her soft voice became disgusting, like she was speaking in an exaggerated falsetto.

“Mmh, I suppose.” Osana’s voice was overpowering, sharp tones piercing into Ayano’s ears like knives. “But, I don’t know. I just feel nervous.”

“Don’t be. I know he’ll accept your feelings.”

 _No, no, he couldn’t possibly do that_. But, why would he reject Osana? Osana was his friend that had stuck with him for years and years on end. Why would he reject her? For Ayano? Ayano, who had met with him only once, and even then she was as fleeting as a whim, so easily forgettable. Unlikely. Even if she hoped and yearned he fell for her instantly like she did—and not from the desire to be loved but her unwillingness to make herself known—how could such a thing be true, when he hadn’t even sought her out even once since then? Really, he certainly already forgot her.

This year was a wasted one for her as well.

“Ah, jeez, it’s so embarrassing to think about, but in a good way, you know?” Osana laughed. “But Senpai really is someone I cherish.”

“If that’s how you feel you should confess to him as soon as possible,” said Raibaru. “I’ll help you.”

“Is that really okay?” Osana asked, to which Raibaru nodded. “Okay, then I guess it’s best to rip off the bandaid quickly, right? So, I’ll set my goal here: I’m going to confess to Senpai by this Friday!”

What.

Ever since starting the school year, Ayano had assumed the three of them would be stuck in time forever. She hadn’t enjoyed Osana and Raibaru’s company, she never did, but she reveled in the complacency. None of them would ever move closer to their goals, and Ayano was free to live in the numbing laziness she had struggled through all her life. It was familiar and horrible, but without the comforter of idleness she felt bare against the springtime air. Osana, too, would always be uncomfortably close to Taro, but he was destined to walk slightly ahead of her, too absorbed in the monotony of life to notice her silent affection. They would be immutably frozen, immutably tortured, immutably enjoying life in the meaningless lazy days that enveloped them.

But time, no matter how slow, always passes. Even the sky, which rose unthinkably high, was different, full of birds and music, warm air filtering down onto the world. Even the sky, which had been there since time began, had changed.

Ayano gripped her crossed legs, feeling her fingernails poke through her stockings with how tight she clenched her hands. _It always comes to this_ , she thought to herself. _I can never be happy_. She was never afforded the chance when she was young, happiness stripped away from her just because she had the misfortune of being her mother’s daughter, leaving her hollowed out and unwhole. So Ayano suffered through it for seventeen years, wondering when _bear with it until then_ would become a distant memory. Year after year, she woke up, went to school, ate, and went back to sleep, like those meaningless life cycle charts she previously studied; an endless loop of surviving and going through the motions and breeding and dying and coming back and _being alive but never living_. Happiness, love—over time those two things became interchangeable in her inability to possess them—they were never meant for her. They were an ill-fitting skin that attempted to place her into existence, when it would be better and easier to go back to an empty, nothing person.

There was a bittersweet nostalgia towards Ayano’s days as a living ghost. How she wanted, more than anything, to return to those empty days. The pain of wanting and never having, of feeling and never succeeding was a pain much too great to bear. If only Ayano could revert back to her previous self… If that would happen, then Ayano would never make the mistake of waking up again. It would be better to sleep.

Ayano’s mother was happy with her life, even though her husband feared her and hated her and thought of nothing but his own futility. Truly, no one loved Ryoba Aishi, and no one ever would. And it was okay with her because Ryoba loved someone, loved one person, and that love filled her and consumed her and defined her every action, every thought, every emotion. Ayano loved Taro more than life, but that gaping emptiness and loneliness so often held her so tight that she struggled to breathe. She thought she would be as happy as her mother, but even though she loved Taro, she was swept under her unhappiness, under her fear, under her dissatisfaction.

She loved him, so she should have been _saved_.

So… so why did she still feel empty?

“I want to be loved,” she said, her words low and quiet and true.

There was someone talking next to her ear.

“—chan? Yan-chan? Ayano?”

Ayano snapped towards Osana’s voice. What was with that nervous expression, what was with Ayano’s misty eyes?

“You’re crying, what’s wrong?” She put a hand on Ayano’s knee. The warmth… was okay.

Ayano touched a fingertip to her cheek, surprised when it was wet. “Sorry,” she muttered, wiping the tears away. But no matter what she did the dampness didn’t cease. “Sorry. You can keep talking.”

Osana and Raibaru looked concerned, Ayano never talked, never voiced her obvious discomfort, she only looked off into the distance distractedly, yet still listened to them intently. For her to interrupt, with tears or language, was utterly strange.

“Yan-chan,” said Raibaru, leaning past Osana. “I know you don’t like to talk, so you don’t have to tell us what’s wrong. But we’ll help you as best we can anyways.”

Ayano gaped at them, her lip trembling, her hands still clenched so tight her knuckles were a deathly pale. Their concerned faces reminded her so suddenly of the soap operas she’d watch as a child. Eyebrows furrowed, head tilted, mouth slightly ajar, it was the prototypical worried expression.

“It’s not fair.” The words spilled out of her lips uncontrollably.

“What is?” Osana asked.

Ayano stood up with a jolt. “Don’t touch me! It isn’t fair! It’s not fair! Why, _why_? It’s _not fair! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS? IT’S NOT FAIR!_ ” She felt like a child. The prototypical child’s temper tantrum, screaming and kicking things, repeating herself senselessly. Even this felt like a facade, but the words slipped out of her and on and on and on and on—

What was the point of emotions, so disgusting and unsightly? She had yearned for meaning for so long but now that she had just a taste of it Ayano suffered for it.

“Stop just… _humoring_ me!” She pointed an accusatory finger at Osana who stood immediately with Rai. Her breath was growing shallow. “Why don’t you make sense? You want me for something, so what is it?! I’m just—I’m just—I don’t know why I still… why I still…”

She was beyond incomprehensible, furious ranting sandwiched between furious sobs. Ayano tugged at her hair and it felt too heavy, grasped at her arms and they felt too unwieldy, covered her face and it felt too grimy.

“I’m supposed to be happy,” she said. She kept wiping her eyes with the back of her hand but it did nothing. “I have love so it should be fine now. W—why?”

 _I want to_ be _loved_.

The love she had for Taro felt so fake, felt so alien. How could something like that fulfill her when it wasn’t even a part of her? Oh, she wasn’t normal, not even by her mother’s standards. Her mother who had carelessly bloodied her hands still loved and was still happy and was satisfied with just that, but Ayano was just an empty shell. She felt so little, she felt so much.

Love, what was that shit anyways? Ayano never knew what love felt like, so how could she possibly emulate that distant emotion and give it to someone else? It was a fake feeling, she was a fake person, she…

“Sorry,” she said. “For being a bother.”

“Yan-chan…”

Ayano looked at Raibaru. She wondered if _her_ mother loved her. Wondered if _her_ parents loved each other. The soap operas said that was normal, mothers to love their daughters, husbands to love their wives. But that couldn’t be further from Ayano’s reality, yet still she turned out just fine.

She turned out just fine, unloving and unloved, screaming and crying at the school’s pool, ranting uncontrollably to two girls she hardly spoke to. At least Ayano was calm now.

“You’re not bothering me!”

Osana shot forward and faced Ayano eye-to-eye. She was about to place both her hands on Ayano’s shoulders but stopped herself, putting her hands on her hips instead.

“I like being with you, so please don’t think you’re a bother.”

Raibaru stood next to Osana and nodded. “I feel the same way.” Her voice, when assertive, made Ayano immediately want to listen more.

“Then just tell me what you need from me,” Ayano said carefully. “And you can stop—you can stop wasting time.”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Osana said. “I hang out with you because you’re my friend.”

Ayano watched her face. What an impressionable girl, her lip was quivering like she too was about to cry. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’d like to.”

Ayano looked away. She would regret it later, but she sat back down and swung her still covered legs over the side of the pool. The water was freezing, and the sight of dirt from her soles wafting away into the water was disgusting, but it centered her unexpectedly.

Osana and Raibaru sat back down with her, one on both her left and right. They said nothing until she did.

“I thought it would be enough to love someone, even if there’s nothing in the world left for me.” Idly, she opened and closed her fist repeatedly. “I hate this.”

“He doesn’t love you back?” Rai asked gently.

“No one loves me,” she said matter-of-fact. “I thought it would be alright. I’m not built for that kind of thing.”

“Yan-chan, I’m sure that isn’t true,” Raibaru responded. “What about your parents?”

Ayano shook her head, but didn’t look back at her to respond. “Why would they? My mother already has someone else.”

“Well, then you have shitty parents!” Osana said. She was more fired up than Ayano had been in her entire life.

“That’s just the way things are,” said Ayano.

“Maybe so.”

Raibaru pinched her. “Osana!”

“Oh, quit it.” Osana rubbed her side. “You can’t change your parents, but you _can_ change yourself. A-and even if you don’t have anyone who’ll stay by your side right now, that doesn’t mean you can’t find someone.”

“And… I want to be that person for you, okay?”

Ayano looked at her. “If you want to.”

“I do, but…” Osana frowned. “What matters is if that’s what _you_ want.”

“I don’t—” Ayano sighed and laid her head down on the concrete. “—care what my parents do. It’s not about them.”

“Then what is it?” Osana asked.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Rai added immediately, like she usually did whenever Ayano felt pressured to talk.

“It always felt like there was something missing inside of me,” Ayano said anyways, and talked a bit about her eternal listlessness.

“I thought… meeting him would save me. I thought that alone would be enough.”

“Yan—Ayano. No one can ‘save’ you.” Osana also rest her head down. “Not some boy or me or Rai or anyone in the world can ‘save’ you. That’s something only you can do.”

“The only thing we can do is stay by your side and help you get through it.”

Ayano turned her head from staring at the sky to look at Osana. “I guess.”

She sat herself up. “Being loved… was always a desire I considered abnormal.”

“That’s not true at all!” Raibaru said. “Everyone wants to be loved.”

“I guess,” she repeated.

Osana rose from laying down and closed her eyes, feeling the breeze on her face.

“Don’t you want to ask?” Ayano said.

“Ask what?” Osana opened her eyes and turned.

“Who—” Nervousness creeped up inside her. “Who _he_ is?”

Osana let out a long _ahhh_ ~ and kicked one leg in the air. “Of course I wanna know. But you don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you,” Ayano said suddenly and seriously. “You said you were my friend, so, in order to maintain that, I won’t tell you. And… even if I can’t be loved… I still _want_ that, so… I won’t tell you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Osana. “And, by the way, you already _are_ loved.”

Ayano jerked her head up and stared at her incredulously. “What?”

“Rai and me are your friends, so naturally we love you. That’s just—” Osana smiled and grasped her hand and Ayano let her. “—how it works.”

And Ayano didn’t say anything then, in fact said nothing until a teacher came and shooed them back home. Her house was empty these days, so she said nothing that evening either.

 _Naturally we love you_.

It seemed that, even if it was just a minuscule amount, the overpowering emptiness in her heart felt just the littlest bit less heavy.


End file.
